About

I am a PhD student at the Surrey Morphology Group. I am writing my dissertation on the the historical development of gender and classifier systems in the Northwest Amazon area. My interests include the documentation and description of the languages of South America, and the questions that they pose with regard to the region's history, as well as their broader theoretical implications.

Here you can find information about what I am working on and what I have done so far:

For a comprehensive overview of my activities, you can read my CV.

If you would like to know something else, please don't hesitate to get into contact.

You might be wondering how to pronounce my name.

My first name Jurriaan is Dutch and is sometimes said to be etymologically related to George. Personally, I pronounce it [ˈjʏ.ɾi.aːn], but Dutch has a wide array of realizations for the rhotic. My last name Wiegertjes is either a patronym of the first name Wieger with diminutive -tje and genitive -s suffixed to it, or it is a matronym of the first name Wiegertje with the genitive suffixed. Personally, I pronounce it [ˈʋi.χəɻ.t͡jəs], but Dutch <g> can also realized as [ɣ], [x], or [h].

Once I am a discourse topic, you can refer to me as he or him and avoid all the phonological hassle.

The development of nominal categorization systems of Northwest Amazonia

My PhD dissertation is about the development of nominal categorization systems in the languages of Northwest Amazonia.

Categorization plays an important role in human culture and cognition. In language, a major reflection of this is noun categorization, namely grammatical gender and classifiers. Noun categorization systems found in Northwest Amazonia pose fundamental problems for our understanding of what noun categorization is, and how it works.

Gender and classifiers are usually understood as opposing systems, where gender is an agreement system, and classifiers fulfill more pragmatic functions. However, many Northwest Amazonian systems have properties of both, thus defying existing typologies and theories. This is an extraordinary situation, and the fact that it occurs in various unrelated Northwest Amazonian languages raises questions about the evolution and spread of these perplexing systems.

Northwest Amazonian classifiers have been analysed as incipient gender systems (Grinevald & Seifart 2004). However, reconstruction of the categorization systems of the Tukanoan family indicates the opposite development: the classifier system developed out of the gender system, which may explain the gender-like characteristics in this family (Wiegertjes 2021; 2023).

My dissertation investigates if similar scenarios may have occurred in other language families of the area, and what role language contact has played in the spread of these unique noun categorization systems.

Vaímajã

I am working on the documentation and description of Vaímajã, an Eastern Tukanoan language spoken in the Vaupés region of Colombia. I received a Glottobank/ELDP grant for this project and will soon be contributing my preliminary analyses of the grammar to Grambank, and recordings to the Endangered Languages Archive.

This project is built on principles of equality and sustainability and the subject of the documentation is in large part decided by community members. Together, we have produced a new alfabet for the language, and we are also working on a booklet with traditional narratives, curated and recounted by community members.

SAPPHIRE

Over the last years, I have contributed to Rik van Gijn's ERC project South American population history revisited (SAPPHIRE) at Leiden University. This is a multidisciplinary project about the population history of the Upper Amazon area. In Austin Howard's very nice podcast series (see video), this project is discussed in more detail.

My role in the project centres around nominal categorization and the noun phrase in the languages of the Northwest Amazon area.

Ecuadorian Siona

In 2018, I attended the Amazonicas VII conference in Baños, Ecuador, and the acompanying summer school in Quito. Afterward, Martine Bruil and Andrés Pablo Salanova organized a field school to Sototsiaya, an Ecuadorian Siona village, where I gathered data for my BA thesis on grammaticalization of Serial verbs in the language.

I maintain good contacts with the people of Sototsiaya and hope to work with them again sometime.

References

Grinevald, Colette, and Frank Seifart. 2004. “Noun Classes in African and Amazonian Languages: Towards a Comparison.” Linguistic Typology 8(2): 243–85. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.2004.007.

Wiegertjes, Jurriaan. 2021. The Development of Classifiers in the Tukanoan Family. Leiden University, Leiden MA thesis. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3279201.

———. 2023. “From gender to classifiers: the development of Tukanoan nominal categorization systems.” Presented at Amazonicas IX, Bogotá. 5-9 June.